Sweet Precision
by pedal
Summary: How Vlad's creation, Danielle, came into the world.


Written: November 2006

Disclaimer: Wow, the plot is barely even mine XD;; The title is a lyric of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Hard to Concentrate."

Author's Note: One of the most fun commissions I've ever gotten.

Dedication: For Komaru-Ryu, who requested this awesome fic idea. And thanks Tom, for beta-ing. You are win.

Sweet Precision

By Pedal

He had come to welcome the eerie green glow. Every moment he found comfort in it, aside from the few he spent in his room the rare nights he remembered to go to bed. But then, of course, he dreamed of it. Of his beautiful, perfect creation. Of his son.

But he forgot one thing.

The morning after one of the few times he had found the sense to sleep in his bed found him groggily making coffee in the kitchen. And thinking over the work that lay ahead of him that day. Against his better wishes, he was actually awake by the time he descended to his lab. The mug was spared the fall it took to the floor, but its third filling of coffee was lost to the stone bricks.

His cold breath gathered on the glass over and over, and over and over he wiped the fog away. Vlad Masters had been staring into the tube for so long each day with excited anticipation that he had forgotten to really look.

The clone's form was too soft, round in places a boy simply would not be. Hips that budded farther out from a tinier than desired waist, resulting in shoulders that were less broad than the hips. Her hips. She.

Daniel would not be his, but. No, no, this couldn't be right. But the calculations agreed; his clone was a female. A failure. Well, a miscalculation, really. Vlad had simply not taken elementary genetics into account; without a certain spark, every human or even every mammal born would be female. The spark was ordinarily expected by the one half chance in those who were naturally conceived and borne. But with experiments or "test tube babies", that usually simple spark was extremely difficult to produce without serious error. Vlad had wrongly assumed that because Daniel's DNA was male, so would the clone.

"What a mindless mistake," he told his child, laying his hand on the warm glass. "How could I have missed it? I just wanted so much for you to be perfect. And now..." Its long hair was pushed up and aside periodically by passing bubbles, its fingers twitching regularly. It had two more years, or about seven months, to go before it would be Daniel's age. At the moment, it was only around the equivalent of twelve years.

But it wouldn't be exactly Daniel anyway. Why not make it more unique, Vlad thought recklessly, long fingers flying over the two and a half pieces of keyboards he had set up around the glass to monitor its progress and maintain it environment meticulously. A quiet alarm beeping timidly from the computer screens around him was soon followed by a louder one that he had wired through the entire Colorado villa. The nearly deafening buzzing was intermittent with Maddie's voice announcing in a cheery voice, "Clone destabilized. Please tend to the poor dear immediately."

"No!" roared Vlad, panicking. The locks for the thick glass were up until the seven months it would take to complete his creation. He hadn't yet entered an override. Now there was no time.

Transforming, he began hurling relentless attacks at the tube until it cracked slightly. Anything else would kill it, though. Red lights poured down on him, and his forehead was wet with perspiration by the time he changed back. His ponytail whipped against his face as he looked around wildly, searching for something to impale the glass with.

Finally, without returning to his Plasmius form, Vlad formed a raw pink blade that glowed and sparked sporadically and began swinging it at the glass. His sharp teeth gritted and his voice rumbled with each heave, and soon the stitching on the backs of his sleeves tore apart. Without his ghost hands or black gloves, the pink ectoplasm burned and bit cold at his bare human flesh. But right now, the young life in danger made the pain seem non-existent.

Its eyes flew open, legs kicking aimlessly as it reached out all around itself. Bubbles poured from its mouth upwards, and Vlad feared it would need oxygen immediately rather than the amniotic fluid it currently thrashed in. Some leaked through the cracks, but it was emptying nowhere near quickly enough.

Vlad mustered all of his human strength in his last blow, and prayed it would work. The blade vanished back into his form as he slid on the now wet stone floor to meet flood of liquid. It nearly swept him off his feet as it rushed past him, but he slid back a foot or two before fishing the clone's fragile form out of the greenish river. Falling to his knees, Vlad ignored the shards cutting into his legs to focus on what now appeared to him to be some sort of sleeping angel. "Sleeping? No! Wake up, child. Wake up," he cried mindlessly, putting a hand to first its cheek then its neck to find a pulse.

But his shaking hand never found the beating; a screaming gasp and string of coughing stopped him. "Daniel!" he said without thinking. Soon it quieted and opened its tired, clear blue eyes with a shiver. Suddenly the title 'it' didn't seem right, not as those wide eyes dazed up at him. Her angelic form in his arms, her steadying but strong breaths, her eyes.

But right now Vlad strained to ignore the strange pride he felt in favor of cleaning his new daughter up and getting her warm and dry. First he wrapped her in his suit jacket. But when he braced one knee out to stand, the girl cried out. His leg had caught on her long hair. It might have hung to around her ankles at the longest since he had never cut it as she was being created. With a pink flash and a smaller blade, he sliced the raven hair to her mid-back and rose to bring her upstairs. Transforming now would only scare the small girl who clung helplessly to him. A girl that was nothing close to a miscalculation.

"You're safe, my dear. My Danie—" he faltered. But for her it was a simple solution. Daniel had his counterpart, even in name; "My Danielle." She was perfect.


End file.
